A few weeks ago, this was the disaster I was facing. Beneath this mess of gesso and paint and scribbles is another collage of a bathtub that wasn’t working – with a stupid weeble launching itself in from the left, that looked far too much like a penis.

Then I tried to salvage it with a large yellow rubber duck which you can kind of make out in the centre of the canvas with it’s breast and wing.

But the tub wasn’t working, it just looked crappy. I tried to create black tiles but even my collage tiling was terrible and the composition was all whacky.

So, I gessoed over the whole thing, repainted in some new backgrounds and started again.

And this is the result and I am so much happier with it. I feel like the story is right because this one is based in truth. This work is loosely based on a time as a child when my Uncle Trevor was visiting and I was in the bath with my brothers. I was so scared of being naked, that I didn’t want to get out of the bath to go to the toilet. It was just like the pool scene in Caddy Shack. So gross.

Anyway, what am I blathering on about? Persist even when you hate the sight of a canvas. Persist even when you think everything is shit. Literally.